Out of Africa

With a rash of recent films shot in Africa, it might seem that Hollywood just discovered the location. Not so. Directors have been using the varied terrain and sweeping landscapes since the ’50s. Here’s a sampling.

ART IMITATES LIFE: (right) John Huston led his crew upstream in the Congo to shoot The African Queen (1951). (above) Clint Eastwood (right) directed and plays a filmmaker much like Huston shooting a movie much like The African Queen in White Hunter Black Heart (1990), filmed in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

70 dga quarterly tktktktk dga quarterly 71 ROUGH GOING: Sydney Pollack filmed Out of Africa (1985), based on Isak Dinesen’s books, near Ngong Hills outside Nairobi, Kenya, where the author lived.

WORLD STAGE: Zimbabwe stands in for South Africa in Morgan Freeman’s recreation of a small town- ship for Bopha! (1993), the story of a black police officer during Apartheid.

JUNGLE FEVER: Michael Apted, with Sigourney Weaver, used real gorillas k t where he could to film k t k t k

t Gorillas in the Mist: The k t

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s Story of Diane Fossey (1988) o t o

h in Rwanda and Kenya. P

dga quarterly 73 GOD HELP US: Fred Zinnemann directing Audrey Hepburn as a young woman living in a convent in The Nun’s Story (1959), shot in the Congo.

CAMEL TIME: Filming a comedy in Morocco with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman was no laughing matter for Elaine May and her team on Ishtar (1987).

TRUE STORY: Terry George stages the U.N. peace- keeping forces protecting k t

thousands of Tutis refugees k t k t k

against Hutu militia in Hotel t k t

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Rwanda (2004), shot in s o t o

South Africa. h P

74 dga quarterly dga quarterly 75 WHITE HUNTERS: Howard Hawks (right) plans a scene with John Wayne (left) in Hatari!, shot in Tanzania. In 1962, the story of a group of men trapping wild animals to sell to zoos was politically acceptable.

DESERT PATROL: Alejandro González Iñárritu tries to get his point across to an army of cast, crew and extras shooting Babel (2006) on location in Morocco.

BIG COUNTRY: Henry King and company stalk a rhino in an adaptation of Hemingway’s The Snows k t k t k

t of Kilimanjaro (1952), shot k t

:

s in Kenya. King first shot o t o

h in Africa in 1939. P

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